


use your head

by bibliosexual



Series: the hunger games [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hunger Games Setting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-05
Updated: 2017-02-05
Packaged: 2018-09-22 05:18:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9585152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bibliosexual/pseuds/bibliosexual
Summary: They leave Beacon Hills the morning after the Reaping.He and Derek stand side-by-side in the rear train car, silent, watching Beacon Hills get smaller and smaller. It doesn’t take long at all for the forest to swallow the view.“Guess that’s that, then,” Stiles says, because some things feel too heavy for silence. “On to new horizons and all that.”Beside him, Derek acts like he hasn’t heard. He presses one shaking palm to the window, then turns and walks out without a word.“Okay,” Stiles says. “Nice chat.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is a little bit of a sequel and mostly a prequel. 
> 
> [maybehonestly](http://maybehonestly.tumblr.com/) wrote me, "I didn't know that I needed a Sterek hunger games au until I just read your scene and now I need it like for reals! I need to know, was Derek like Peeta and loving Stiles from afar? How do the games turn out? Does everyone aka Danny, Braeden, etc still die? aka if you decide to write more I'm so down to read it!" and then this happened. 
> 
> Originally posted [on my tumblr](http://bibliosexxual.tumblr.com/post/130853484431/i-didnt-know-that-i-needed-a-sterek-hunger-games).

They leave Beacon Hills the morning after the Reaping.

He and Derek stand side-by-side in the rear train car, silent, watching Beacon Hills get smaller and smaller. It doesn’t take long at all for the forest to swallow the view.

“Guess that’s that, then,” Stiles says, because some things feel too heavy for silence. “On to new horizons and all that.”

Beside him, Derek acts like he hasn’t heard. He presses one shaking palm to the window, then turns and walks out without a word.

“Okay,” Stiles says. “Nice chat.”

*

As far as Stiles can tell, there are only two people on the train besides them. There’s their escort, Erica, who looks at Stiles with the same ‘I’m going to kill you and maybe eat you’ vibes as Derek, only a whole hell of a lot more intense. Rumor has it she’s not from the Capitol originally, but from District 9. Stiles believes it. No one from the Capitol could look at you like that, like they knew, like they’d been there.

Then there’s their mentor, a guy named Deaton who won fifteen years ago. Stiles hasn’t met him yet, hasn’t even seen him except on old footage of the Games. There, he’d been a careful, put-together kid, a mere fourteen years old, all skin and bones and pleasant, careful smiles. Definitely not the usual winning type, which gives Stiles a little hope for his own chances.

So there’s the four of them. Logically, Stiles thinks there must be others. A train doesn’t run on its own, food doesn’t appear magically and perfectly prepared on the table. But if they’re there, he doesn’t see them.

For a train, it’s awfully quiet.

Still, it’s probably the nicest place Stiles has ever been. His compartment has air conditioning and a huge window and its own little bathroom with shiny fixtures and instant hot water and little cakes of white soap carved into the shape of the Capitol eagle. He can take as many showers as he wants. He can choose from five different scents of shampoo. The bed is like sinking into a cloud, if clouds smelled faintly like fresh flowers.

There’s a whole car full of snacks they can eat whenever they want: spring rolls, miniature cakes, buttery pastries, three kinds of jam, fruit, rainbow macaroons, bite-sized candies that taste like a whole pie condensed into a single mouthful. Stiles didn’t know that food could be so rich, that his stomach could feel this full.

But he can’t get over the prickling sensation that he’s being watched. His compartment door has no lock, and on the second morning, he finds an origami crane on his nightstand that wasn’t there when he went to sleep.

It doesn’t take him long after that to discover the tiny camera attached to the smoke detector over his bed. He suspects it’s probably not the only one.

Maybe the Capitol has been watching him pee.

After breakfast on the second day, Stiles follows Derek over to the dining car window. It seems likely that after their little heart-to-heart last night, Derek might not kill him for asking a question, even if he has reverted to his default brood-and-glare this morning.

“Have you, uh … noticed …” _The cameras_ , he means to say, but over Derek’s shoulder, his eyes catch Erica’s. She raises her eyebrows.

Right. It doesn’t matter where he tries to have this conversation or how softly he speaks, not when their escort is a damn werewolf. If Derek can hear Stiles having a nightmare from a different compartment even over the noise of the train, Erica can definitely hear Stiles and Derek talking from across the car.

Stiles sighs. “Never mind.”

*

Erica catches him a few hours later fiddling with the cameras in his room, trying to figure out how to detach them from the wall. He’s discovered five so far. They’re so badly hidden, it’s like they _want_ to be found.

“You,” Erica says, “with me. Now.”

Stiles follows her out, stomach in knots, but when they get to the dining car, she tosses a grin over her shoulder. “Relax, I’m not really mad. It’s just fun pulling your leg. You tributes are always so tense.”

“Gee, I wonder why,” Stiles mutters, and that’s when he sees who’s sitting at the table, having a very late lunch.

Deaton. It has to be. He’s filled out some, grown a salt-and-pepper goatee and shaved his head, but it’s definitely still him. Same pleasant smile. Same calm, calculating eyes. Everything about him feels totally zen and self-contained. There could be anything going on behind those placid eyes. Stiles instantly doesn’t trust him.

“Mr. Stilinski,” he says, and gestures for Stiles to take a seat.

Erica, meanwhile, hovers by the windows, peeling the wrapper off a mini cupcake with deliberate slowness. She’s not even trying to pretend she’s not listening.

“I thought we could talk about your strategy,” Deaton says, pushing his plate aside. Straight down to business, then. “You–”

“Shouldn’t Derek be here for this, too?” Stiles interrupts.

Deaton gives a minute shrug. “If you prefer. Sometime tributes feel that it’s better to strategize individually.”

“Well, I don’t feel that way,” Stiles says. “Does he?”

Deaton folds his hands neatly on the table. “Mr. Stilinski–”

“Stiles.”

“Stiles. While it’s true that you and Mr. Hale come from the same district, you’d do well to remember that there can only be one victor. Despite any potential alliance between the two of you early in the Games, you will inevitably become competitors at some point.”

Stiles feels like thunking his head on the table a few times. “I know that, Captain Obvious. And I still want him here, if he wants to be here.”

“Yeah, I do,” says Derek, from where he’s leaning in the doorway. Stiles can’t even be surprised. Of course Derek’s been listening in. Werewolf.

“Long time no see,” Stiles says as Derek sits down. “What’ve you been doing in there all day, anyway?” Stupid question. His brain immediately supplies some possibilities that make him wish he wasn’t surrounded by creatures with super-sniffers. He shifts uncomfortably. Where did that thought even come from? He doesn’t even _like_ guys.

“I was working out,” Derek says, hunching his (very muscly) shoulders a little defensively.

“What,” Stiles snorts, “all day?”

Derek just raises his caveman eyebrows, like, _Yeah, and?_

“It’s not a bad idea,” Deaton says.

“Yeah, for _him_ , maybe,” Stiles says. “He already looks like freaking Wolverine.” Blank stares. Right. Most people don’t keep a stash of contraband pre-Panem comic books in their bedrooms. Stiles sighs. “Look, all I’m saying is, the Games start in two weeks. It’s a little late for me to start building muscle.”

Derek scowls. “Oh, so you would rather just sit around doing nothing, is that it? Just waiting around to die?”

Stiles rolls his eyes. “So what if I would? Did it ever occur to you that instead of killing myself with a bunch of useless pushups, I might actually like to _enjoy_ what little time I have left?”

“Yeah, last night you looked like you were really enjoying yourself,” Derek snarks, and then immediately turns bright red. “Uh, I didn’t–I just meant–the nightmares–I was being sarcastic–”

Stiles smirks and leans back in his chair. “I dunno, I’m enjoying myself quite a bit right now.”

Erica snorts. “Nice.” 

Deaton clears his throat pointedly. Right. Strategy meeting.

It exactly doesn’t go as well as Stiles was hoping.

Derek sits there with his head down, tearing biscuit after biscuit into a growing pile of little crumbly pieces on the table. Erica watches him do it with a pinched look, like she’s anticipating having to sweep up every last crumb later.

Meanwhile, Deaton slowly and methodically lectures them on the importance of being charming and likable for the media. His voice never strays from soft and steady, lulling. Stiles gets the impression he’s had a lot of practice giving this speech, and that his expectations are hovering pretty low. Not surprising, really. No one from Beacon Hills has won since Deaton, and that was fifteen years ago. Thirty tributes ago. It occurs to Stiles that this is not exactly a ringing endorsement of Deaton’s mentoring skills.

“What about in the arena?” Stiles finally interrupts. “What then?”

Deaton opens his hands like, _Beats me_.

“Well,” Stiles says, frustration rising, “what did _you_ do?”

“I got lucky,” Deaton says, and doesn’t seem inclined to say much more, besides the vague and rather obvious advice to “Use your head.”

Then there’s the awkward moment when Erica suggests Derek give Stiles the bite. “It wouldn’t take,” Derek says, “I’m not an alpha,” and Stiles immediately says, “But wait, didn’t your whole family–”

 _Die a horrible death when your house burned down_ , he thinks, but thankfully stops himself at the last second from saying.

“Not my uncle,” Derek says, staring down at the table. “He’s the alpha now. He’s in a coma.”

“Oh,” Stiles says. He knew Derek’s life sucked, but he didn’t know it sucked that bad.

“I think I’m going to go,” Derek says, and the meeting doesn’t last very long after that.

*

That night, Stiles dreams he’s racing through the train, frantic, hunted by a seething mass of tiny cameras like spiders. Deaton’s voice echoes off the walls, an endless, infuriating litany of, _Use your head, Mr. Stilinski, use your head_. But he can’t. His head’s a mass of static, panic, _Oh shit oh shit_ on repeat. Useless. He doesn’t know which is going to be worse, getting to the end of the train or discovering there is no end.

He startles awake sweaty and shaking, like he really did spend the whole night running.

It’s 2:30 in the morning, but Derek’s awake, too, sitting silently in the rear car with his knees hugged to his chest, just watching the scenery go by, the dark trees, the darker night behind them. His reflection is like a ghost in the glass. He looks up when Stiles comes in, then quickly away again.

“Hey,” Stiles says. “Can I sit with you?”

Derek shrugs. Stiles supposes that’s the best he’s gonna get, so he settles down a safe few feet away on the cushioned bench and tucks his legs up under him.

There’s not much to see outside, just pale blurs of tree trunks lit by the lights from the train. Still, there’s something soothing about it, the monotony of it, like watching waves on a beach.

“Did you know,” Stiles says eventually, “before Panem, they used to give prisoners sentenced to death one last meal? I read a book once that was just a bunch of photos of the meals people asked for before they died. Whatever they wanted, they got it. Then it was off to the execution.”

“I didn’t know that,” Derek says. “History wasn’t my best subject.”

“Well, it’s not the sort of thing you learn in history class, anyway,” Stiles says. “I don’t think my dad was supposed to have books like that. But Peacekeepers can get away with a lot. Especially minor rules like that. No one cares.”

“Must be nice,” Derek says politely. As a werewolf, he’s probably been watched like a hawk his whole life. Stiles didn’t think about that. He probably should’ve.

“Yeah. Well, anyway, I keep thinking about this book. Like, imagine knowing as you’re eating that it’s the last time you’re ever going to taste food, ever again.“

Derek turns away from the window to look at him curiously. “What would you ask for?”

“Burger and curly fries,” Stiles says. He doesn’t even have to think about it. Or maybe he’s already thought about it too much. Something to think about besides the arena, or the way his dad had hugged him goodbye, so tight he could almost feel his bones creaking.

“I’ve never had it.”

“Me neither,” Stiles admits. “But my mom said she used to eat stuff like that all the time, before. When she was a kid. She still remembered how it used to be. And I don’t have much left of her except stories like that, so I think it’d be comforting, you know? Like I was feeling something she’d felt.” He ducks his head. “It sounds kind of corny when I say it out loud.“

“No,” Derek says. “I get it.” His eyes flick down, so quick Stiles nearly misses it, and his nostrils flare. “Isn’t that your friend’s hoodie?”

Stiles glances down, too. “Oh. Yeah. It’s–Scott gave it to me after the Reaping.” He’d had just fifteen minutes with his family–his dad and Scott and Scott’s mom–before the Peacekeepers had escorted him out. It felt more like five seconds, and at the same time, five years. The most awful fifteen minutes of his life.

Stiles wonders suddenly if there was anyone left to tell Derek goodbye. Probably not, if his only remaining family member wasn’t even conscious.

Stiles shifts uncomfortably, pulls the hoodie’s sleeves over his hands. “Anyway, yeah, I was sleeping with it on. Thought it might help with, you know.”

“Yeah,” Derek says.

No need to add, _But it didn’t_. 


End file.
